Jean Grémillon

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Kinsayder · #26 Post by **Kinsayder** » Tue Jun 27, 2006 3:53 pm

Well, Rene Chateau are still selling the VHS of Gueule d'amour from their website...

http://www.renechateauvideo.com/cgi-bin ... barre=3775

...which is reason to hope there is no legal injunction on this title.

EDITED TO ADD:

RC have announced the DVD of Gueule d'amour for Oct 12th:

http://www.alapage.com/-/Fiche/DVD/912706/DVD/

carax09 · #27 Post by **carax09** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 8:42 pm

Oh Please, let it have english subs!

Anyone lucky enough to be in the Boston area near the end of the year should check out the Gremillon retrospective at the Harvard Film Archive. The event is most eloquently hyped by Chris Fujiwara at:

http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/mov ... 018085.htm

carax09 · #28 Post by **carax09** » Sat Jul 08, 2006 12:07 am

David believe me; I try my best, I just don't seem to have much of a facility for languages. I have the RC version of Le Samourai, so I thought there may be a slim chance of english subs, but I'm afraid that they will think these films have limited international appeal. I may have to drive to Boston with some tiny camcorder and videotape subtitles off the screen, and add my own subs to the RCs. That will, of course, guarantee an english friendly release by next spring! My prediction is that Soda Pictures (who brought us Carne's Hotel du Nord) will do the honors.

Steven H · #29 Post by **Steven H** » Sat Jul 08, 2006 2:23 am

davidhare wrote:I suspect you're right - either Soda or MoC (??????)

This is such amazingly good news! There will be a handful of good Gremillon transfers for companies to pick from after this.

Kinsayder · #30 Post by **Kinsayder** » Sat Jul 08, 2006 7:16 pm

davidhare wrote:One of the three greatest French movies of the 1930s!!!!!!!!!!

Just out of curiosity, David... Which would you say are the other two?

The 1930s were an incredibly fertile period in French cinema - roughly 1300 films - only a few dozen of which are available in any form for home viewing. I'd rank the Gremillons very highly, but then there are also Quai des Brumes, Grande Illusion, Le jour se leve, La Bete Humaine, Regle du jeu, Boudu, L'Atalante, the Duviviers, the Fanny trilogy... The role of masterpieces from that decade is very long.

#31 Post by **zedz** » Thu Aug 10, 2006 12:43 am

I second and third just about everything David said about Maldone, an amazing film which would have made my favourite silents list if I'd seen it a couple of months ago.

Some older references to Gremillon reserve the highest praise for his early silents and his later documentaries, virtually ignoring the incredibly fertile middle ground we've been for the most part exploring in this thread. Now I see what all the fuss was about silent Gremillon: absolutely cutting edge filmmaking fusing the best of the avant garde with the best of cutting-edge narrative cinema: High Impressionism.

The camera is frequently in restless, unexpected motion - tracking backwards from an encounter once the initial drama dissipates, whip-panning to capture violent action - or taking its subjects unawares from unexpected angles - hanging from the rafters to look down on carefree revellers, stalking behind a character as he descends a spiral staircase. And yet Gremillon also exhibits world-class montage sequences (such as an exquisite series of lyrical rolling dissolves rhyming characters, animals, landscape and water; a violent accident; momentary inserts representing a character's memories; and the frenetic, unresolved climax) and superb isolated compositions (most notably some sublime close-ups: of Zita, of hands, the extreme close up of Maldone's face just before he cracks at the dance). All this, plus the best accordion scene until Satantango.

You can see clear anticipations of Gremillon's sound style, here, such as his lovely technique of tracking ever-so-slightly in for emphasis. There seems to me a very direct line between this film and Petite Lise, as if, in the latter, he retained all the mastery and innovation of his silent work while adding a new layer of complexity and innovation on the soundtrack. And, as David notes, even in this film he has a keen sense of the expressive potential of music.

The film is comparable to Epstein and scarcely sub-Menilmontant (very high praise, in my book). Who's going to be the first to get this gem out on DVD? The available materials look like they're in very good shape.

Kinsayder · #32 Post by **Kinsayder** » Fri Aug 18, 2006 12:16 pm

L'Etrange Monsieur Victor

A DVD release of this title has been announced, but no date yet:

http://www.dvdfr.com/dvd/f27063_l_etran ... ictor.html

I saw this a while ago on VHS, and had the impression of watching a sinister half-brother of Pagnol's "Marius". When we first see Raimu's character Victor, he appears to be the same loveable bumbling CÃ©sar he played in the Fanny trilogy (there's even a Laurel and Hardy moment when he mistakes a lampshade for his hat). When we learn he's a fence for a gang of thieves we can just about accept that. But then we get to see what he's really capable of... And as Raimu's character darkens and becomes more sinister, so too does the town of Toulon under GrÃ©millon's lens.

People taking the fall for other people's crimes seems to be a recurrent theme in the GrÃ©millons I've seen, and it's central to the story here. I love the way that GrÃ©millon slowly, almost imperceptably, builds up the evidence against Bastien (the fall guy), then as soon as we figure out what's about to happen, he jumps ahead about a year! I love it when a director (and scriptwriter) have that much confidence in the intelligence of their audience. And what an amazing double-sided performance from Raimu.

HerrSchreck · #33 Post by **HerrSchreck** » Sat Aug 26, 2006 7:43 am

Just back from Seattle, and at 4am this morning before work watched MALDONE from a charitable comrade cinelunatic.

I've picketed a bucket fore & aft my physical frame to catch my fucking head it keeps falling offa my throat. Until I can acquire a small child who I can hire at thirdworld rates to keep performing sewup jobs on the spot, the bucket'll remain.

Jesus Looweezus.

Jean Gremillion. More later as I have some coffee & get my flumping head in order. Until then,

Jean Gremilli

n

HerrSchreck · #34 Post by **HerrSchreck** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 1:55 am

Ok. Reoriented.

MALDONE.

First of all, my opinion of the silent era is morphing, as to style, influence, and claims to the majesterial.

I think Carl Dreyer nailed it on the head when he said that Paris in the 20's-- when he toured w MASTER OF THE HOUSE leading to his Le Societe' contract to make JOAN, followed later w VAMPYR-- was the wonderful laboratory of film experimentation.

4 am of the soul? Indeed.. Germany of the second half of the twenties, as the inflation and immediate postwar sense of grim, death-soaked dissolution and poverty yeilded to the economic pickup leading to the New Objectivity of Pabst (and Lang's bloated spectacles) et al, lost it's interest in that dusky twilight, the tripped out zone of the melancholy soul where psychedelic effects seem to occur naturally. The works seem to become far less experimental, less ambitious, less expressive of an unyeilding fidelity to that uncharted netherworld of the mind stumbling thru those hazy mood-regions that warp one's perception like a combination of opiate narcotics and psychedelics combined in one.

Leading to the fucking glory of FRANCE during this period. The best work of Lang, Murnau, Pick, Grune, etc, from 25 & earlier were obviously being closely watched, along with that of, of course, Griffith, Gance, etc. Whereby we're led to the masterpieces of Kirsanoff, Jean Epstein, Feyder, Antoine, R. Bernard, etc.

And now Jean Gremillion-- what a discovery.. Jesus Christ. What a period of inspiration, experimentation, of fidelity to an idea. How can one sit in awe of the by-comparison topically trite SUNRISE (which is nontheless an awe-inspiring masterpiece, don't get me wrong) yet flump right over Gremillion's MALDONE from the same year?

The innovations & embellishments-- light patterns expressing mood, whipping, tracking camera, montage, mastery of composition-- are to me secondary to the unprecedented ability to cause inanimate objects to project mood, sheerly by choice of lens, camera placement, and some incredibly eerie sense of intuition it makes my fucking neck & arm hairs prickle. You know the way Hendrix' MACHINE GUN is more than a guitar solo, the way the notes chosen, and the tone utilized cause one to feel as though one is fogged with poor nutrition in a filthy rice paddy, hasn't bathed in weeks, has the poor mental-health-via-endless-death-encounters soaking the brain & haunting the spine... to know what it feels like to be losing your mind with bullets & artillery splashing & cutting around you?

This to me is Gremillion's creepy talent viz MALDONE... an otherworldly intuition via placement, composition, the ability to cause static pictoral framing to speak volumes about story, mood, fate, impending-something, without having moved the camera yet, had a character walk across a frame yet, or even open their mouth or trigger an intertitle. Then come the wild innovations & embellishments...

I'd remarked on Feulliade's uncanny ability to radiate sinister overtones via a static shot of a room in regular light, transmitting the idea of death through ordinary objects. Well, this is the talent of Gremillion, yet this ability comprises more than just the transmission of a sense of an old murder, or doom, or impending violence-- it can be a sense of being lost, angry, depressed, dreamily melancholy, cabaret-freaky/drunken, etc.

This exalted French Impressionism of Gremillion, Epstein, Kirsanoff, etc, is what Dreyer is tributing in VAMPYR-- not German Expressionism. It is Monet's exact painterly concerns with the visual plane being hazy, throbbing with melancholic warmth, a pleasant endorphine-soaked gloom, coming from one's deep moods.

Enough for now, but suffice to say it's rediculous that this restoration is not out on DVD even in France. I can't believe Shepard or Kalat or Kino have not brought this out here in the US... the land of the homeless silent masterpiece neglected in the place of it's origin. Hopefully we can get that to change soon with some emails & phone calls. Anything less is a kick in the neck of every individual investing in the discs of folks alleging to provide The Best In Cinema.

HerrSchreck · #35 Post by **HerrSchreck** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 6:48 am

Fascinating article from a Harvard retrospective of Gremillion's life & career, "Ressurrection of A Martyr".

Kinsayder · #36 Post by **Kinsayder** » Sun Nov 12, 2006 2:17 am

In GeneviÃ¨ve Sellier's otherwise excellent, appreciative and very detailed book on GrÃ©millon and his films (Le cinÃ©ma est ÃƒÂ vous), L'Ã‰trange Madame X gets short shrift in a couple of paragraphs:

...after several aborted projects, we find GrÃ©millon obliged to film a mediocre story by Marcelle Maurette adapted by Albert Valentin, L'Ã‰trange Madame X, with a casting determined by the commercial requirements of the moment: the couple MichÃ¨le Morgan and Henri Vidal were supposed to fit the bill, but the fragile young actress of the pre-war had by this time become an eminent bourgeoise with academic mannerisms, while the heavy build of Henri Vidal had condemned him to working man and bad boy roles, a pale imitation of Gabin in the 30s... GrÃ©millon also had to comply with budgetary constraints, which become particularly apparent in the sets: the street in the working-class area where the young labourer lives and works, the town house where the publisher and his wife live, and the cafÃ© where the lovers go to meet in secret. It is all utterly conventional, including the exteriors, which were mostly constructed in the studio.

Supposedly set in modern-day Paris, this sombre tale of an adulterous couple and their love-child who dies on Christmas Eve while the mother is attending a ball brings together all the ingredients of a bad tear-jerker, while never once achieving the stylistic exuberance which transfigures Pattes Blanches. Above all, the characters never emerge from the stereotypes of the genre, retaining a flatness ("monolithisme") that is astonishing for a film by GrÃ©millon. [...] The film, presented in Paris on June 22 1951, was a commercial and artistic failure: the director, realising that he had been unable to make this a personal work, preferred to forget this further digression in his career.

Yikes! (and apologies to the authoress for the rough translation).

Personally, I don't object to the sets here, which are not artificial enough to be distracting and which give the film a claustrophobic atmosphere suitable to the story. The casting is more of a problem. Morgan was great in this kind of role in the 30s (e.g., Orage) but had iced over by the 1950s. If GrÃ©millon's theme is the transgression of class barriers and the penalties attached, there should really be some indication from the actors that it is raw passion that is driving them to commit this "sin". I won't make any further comments on Vidal's acting except to say that I find it appropriate that his character works in a carpentry shop.

#37 Post by **zedz** » Sun Nov 12, 2006 4:57 pm

davidhare wrote: The whole picture reeks of Tradition de Qualite but keeps looking as though it might take the leap from that genre/style/ambience to something more personal.

Haven't seen Madame X yet, but I can understand exactly how this would work with Gremillon (and how frustrating it would be if the leap never arrived). The glorious Pattes Blanches (I'm starting to think about my 40s list and this title rises higher every time I consider it) could have been delivered as a completely perfunctory, anonymous production, but instead it ends up in entirely its own space. The same goes for Lumiere d'Ete (to a lesser extent, in that the component parts are more eccentric and the finished product patchier). Gremillon has such amazing transformative power as a director (imagine just how dull Le Ciel est a vous, or even La Petite Lise could have been in clumsier hands) that it must be alarming to see a frog remain a frog.

HerrSchreck · #38 Post by **HerrSchreck** » Mon Nov 13, 2006 1:20 am

If I don't start seeing some of this material in subbed editions in the next 12 months I'm going to start flinging chairs thru glass. A higher cinematic priority doesn't fucking exist for me.. I feel like I been shut out of a party with the most incredible drugs.

DAMMIT-- hello eclipse?

tryavna · #39 Post by **tryavna** » Mon Nov 13, 2006 11:52 am

Schreck has finally come up with a couple of colorful metaphors that encapsulate precisely how I feel, too.

Here's to hoping that Eclipse will provide the same boost to Gremillon's reputation in English-speaking countries that MoC will probably do for Naruse!

HerrSchreck · #40 Post by **HerrSchreck** » Mon Nov 20, 2006 4:20 am

davidhare wrote:I had the most overwhelming sense of a personal, even "confessional" intensity while watching Maldone as though Grem were unloading all of his anxieties and unhappiness, and all his hope for a cinema of musical and poetic lyricism and introspection into this very early work. Perhaps it's reinforced by the ferocious yet frightened look on Dullin's face at the climax.

Watched this again this afternoon- MALDONE that is.

Somehow I missed your comment Dave about the sense of confessional intensity running throughout the construction of this film.

I hafta say that's atomically evident throughout not only this film but through the whole of the French Impressionist-Avant Garde cinematic sensitibility. This phase of filmmaking represents to me perhaps the most deeply felt period in the whole history of the cinema. One feels, running thru the french 20's masterpieces like MALDONE, MENILMONTANT, BRUMES DE AUTOMNES, GLACE A TROIS FACES & CHUTE MAISON USHER et al a sense of overwhelming possession with the core disposition of the subject matter at hand. The fatalistic gloom running to complete, almost irrevocable detatchment of USHER and TROIS FACES, the world weariness and melancholia of Kirsanoffs early masterpieces, the fog of the Stress Of Life (in being confronted daily with the obligation to move repeatedly thru-- due either to economic or socio-familial duty-- zones of life and society which one is simply not built for, and/or detests ) oozing thru MALDONE.

In the latter case I get a very profound sense the film being a crucial unloading-- or confession if you will-- of quite heavy internal unpleasantness obviously permanently rampant within Gremillion. It's almost as though Gremillion is throwing down the gauntlet regarding his fidelities in the world, identifying his zones of loyalty as well as those which keep him in states of sleepless nights, alcohol, and/or simple stress. I've heard it said that stress is what happens when your stomach says NO but your mouth says YES-- and as life and survival and millions of subsequent results of what formerly seemed inocuous choices turn out to be cultivators of a feeling of Wanting To Be Elsewhere-- modern life is plagued with this kind of stress.

As Gremillion is so incredibly fair to all of his characters-- i e the characters of Maldone's wife, stepfather, uncle, etc, are not rendered as idiotic and frivolous haute bourgoisie i e REGLE DE JEU-- and as so much of the discontent is internal and extremely personal within the character of MALDONE.. this film rings as an extremely personal poem. The "problem" could not be solved for MALDONE even if his wife were a model of marital fidelity and exemplary personality, and his uncle & in-laws were more colorful & entertaining-- the issue is ever irreperable, i e where we belong in life, as unchangeable as the direction of the river the barges flow down. To think one can deny one's self or repair a void by amping up the posessions or riches is to plunge even deeper into despair-- the state of despair becomes yet more magnified.

It's that essential fairness to the bourgoisie, the recognition of the essentially unsolvable nature of such problems of basic identity, and the unbelievably powerful rendering of the profound depths of the resulting melancholia of a man so afflicted-- these leave no doubt that the main character of this film is the director himself. It's so much more than a "Man are rich people phony & insincere!" film, far more personal and sophisticated than your "Gimme a poor girl and a life of honest happiness over a debutante daughter of a wealthy father assuring me a life as a corrupt captain of industry" literary stereotype. The film is about the melancholia, and the process of step by step facing the pointlessness of trying to go against your own grain, whatever that is. The film could just as easily be about a wealthy man deciding that his world is a phony, and trying to "go simple & earthy", running away to a farm or factory job-- with the same extremely personal consequences. The sincerity & depth of this inevitable process of the self bubbling back up-- I have no doubt Grem was pretty fucking familiar with it. The fact that he's throwing down his fealty to the less affected & mannered side of society is simply an added bonus in my view.

HerrSchreck · #41 Post by **HerrSchreck** » Mon Nov 20, 2006 5:05 am

davidhare wrote: What I also meant by "personal" is Grem's apparently total identification with Dullin in Maldone. And the emotional power that carries in watching the movie.

That's almost entirely what I meant above-- the authenticity of the trajectory of Maldone himself, the almost complete identification of the problem being one of internal bedrock, how the film is such an expressive rendering of Maldone's internal state of emotional affairs... the authenticity of the rendering makes Grem's identification with maldone basically self-evident. All of the narrative choices, the intuitive choices made for camera & mise en scene-- to me flow from the essential understanding of Mal's/Grem's state of being. This is cinema as it flows from Gremillion-- as a reproduction of Gremillion's inner states. Not a reinvention of cinema for the cinema and from the cinema-- it is a by-extension reinvention of the cinema (as almost all these AV masterpieces were, being so individual and personal) entirely as it stems from the state of the filmmaker... which is what all creativity & genuine unique art should be: utter originality, with some evidence of having lived in the world (the a v influences visible here & there in this intensely personal work) and absorbed the wisdom of one's forebears.

Knappen · #42 Post by **Knappen** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 10:48 am

I wanted to contribute to this thread by posting on a copy I got of GrÃ©millon's DaÃ¯nah la mÃ©tisse but screwed it up and made a new thread instead. Should I try to redirect it?

vogler · #43 Post by **vogler** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 12:11 pm

Knappen wrote:I wanted to contribute to this thread by posting on a copy a got of GrÃ©millon's DaÃ¯nah la mÃ©tisse but screwed it up and made a new thread instead. Should I try to redirect it?

You could copy and paste the whole post from the new thread into a post in this thread. The new thread could then be deleted.

Knappen · #44 Post by **Knappen** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 12:16 pm

DaÃ¯nah la mÃ©tisse (1931):
Great news. I received a very good vhsrip of this film yesterday. From a quick first view this seems to be more personal than "alimentaire" even though it is pure melodrama. GrÃ©millon disavowed the film on it's release as it had been severly cut. My version runs 48 minutes. Does anyone have more info on the film? Does the biography say anything? Not even the Dictionnaire Jean Tulard mentions this film - something that is extremely rare.

#45 Post by **zedz** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 4:13 pm

Good lord! That must be one of the most intriguing series of screen caps I've ever seen! What are those masks all about?

Knappen · #46 Post by **Knappen** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 6:26 pm

This is no early inspiration for Eyes wide shut but a sort of triangular sex drama, anyway. This is well illustrated on the poster of the film with the black husband and white Charles Vanel on each side of la MÃ©tisse:

The film takes place on a luxary cruise on its way to the french colonies. DaÃ¯nah la mÃ©tisse is a dancer and the big flirt on board. Her jealous husband is an illusionist and caps 3-6 depicts his act during a costume ball (this explains the masks). DaÃ¯nah (caps 1&3) does an "exotic" dance and almost gets raped by Vanel who plays a mechanic.

It is too early to say anything definitive about the story behing the film but some lines I've read makes me think of von Stroheim's Queen Kelly - a film where the first half was kept intact with a tacked-on ending. If this is the case, the production company has abolished the latter half because of a risquÃ© plot with too sexy story lines. But this is almost pure speculations from my part. Notice that GrÃ©millon's name is absent on the poster.

All in all, definitely a GrÃ©m to watch and a disc qui fera un trÃ¨s beau cadeau de NoÃƒÂ«l pour l'oncle David en Australie.

Knappen · #47 Post by **Knappen** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 7:04 pm

It's the black gentleman on caps 2, 4, 5 and 6. Without doubt a lesser known actor but he is in the scenes from the turkish bath in Les enfants du paradis. And also in L'homme du Niger, according to the imdb. Why should he be related to a person with a different name?

Kinsayder · #48 Post by **Kinsayder** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 8:52 pm

davidhare wrote:Kinsayder does Sellier have any commentary on this movie?

Yes, about 10 pages of history and analysis of the film - a bit too much to quote in full. It appears that the film got hacked down from 90 to 50 mins for no other reason than that G.F.F.A. wanted to use it as a supporting feature, and 50 minutes was the required length.

Knappen · #49 Post by **Knappen** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 9:01 pm

And how does Sellier feel about the film as it turned out?

Kinsayder · #50 Post by **Kinsayder** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 9:19 pm

She regards it as a mutilated masterpiece: "L'audace du scÃ©nario, la beautÃ© de la mise en scÃ¨ne permettent d'imaginer les qualitÃ©s du long mÃ©trage dÃ©truit..."